Art, Design & Architecture

MA Curating Contemporary Design graduate from 2007, Fleur Watson has co-authored a book with Yael Reisner entitled, ‘Architecture and Beauty: Conversations with Architects about a Troubled Relationship.’ 

What makes the world’s top architects tick? Through discussions with 16 leading architects, including Frank O Gehry,  Zaha Hadid, Greg Lynn and Wolf D Prix, unrivalled access is provided to the formative experiences, creative processes and motivations of some of the most influential design figures today. Through personal interviews, the authors Yael Reiser and Fleur Watson, capture the voices, thoughts and personalities of their subjects. The articles bring us up close to these creative minds with such widely differing positions and opinions, each expressing a very different point of view on aesthetics:  whether they think beauty is integral or non-essential to architecture. Fascinating in what it tells us about individual architects and their work, most significantly Architecture and Beauty raises poignant issues regarding the place of beauty, aesthetics and self-expression within the psychology and the design process of the architectural avant-garde.

The book is published by Wiley & Sons and in May 2010.

Curated by Matthew Poole
Artists: Annkou Latour, Amanda Beech, Mikko Canini, John Cussans, Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Roman Vasseur.
The School of Fine Art’s Roman Vasseur is exhibiting in The Mortar of Distribution, an exhibition to be held in Berlin as part of LoBe London Berlin Art Kunst.
This exhibition brings together works by six artists to propose a politics of art after the fact of its principal social, spatial and political claim. Current liberalisms and more or less traditional idealisations of art’s political power are regularly evidenced in claims that art can and must bind and focus us as a society; that it can and should make politics possible, and is the ‘stuff’ upon which the distribution of social forces and activity pivot. It is the political. This mythology of art’s politics as we know it, is enjoyed as a site of radical dispersal, difference and disagreement. However, and most problematically, it is this idealisation of difference that further solidifies the agency of the artwork as normative. The legacy of this problem creates new and exacting demands for art’s politics now, and is the site for The Mortar of Distribution. Without faith in art’s facility and without the trust of its implicit connection to the political, new assemblages of power are called for.

Private View
Tuesday 18 May 6pm – 10pm
Exhibition continues
until 29 May
Open
Friday to Saturday
3pm – 6pm or by appointment

http://www.lobeart.eu

Wola Nani presents a new range of products designed by Simon Maidment and students from BA Product & Furniture Design and BA Graphic Design & Photography from Kingston University. As one of South Africa’s best‐known charities Wola Nani has developed an income generation initiative through the global appeal and success of their paper products that now provides employment for over 40 HIV‐positive craftswomen.

This new project supported by Kingston University and the Audi Design Foundation has developed new ideas and directions for products and manufacturing techniques celebrating the craft workers skill and the ad hoc simplicity of the original paper bowls. Taking their current papier-mâché process as the starting point, Simon’s project explores the qualities and properties of paper as well as the potential for changes in scale to develop new and innovative lighting designs, which acknowledge the crafters knowledge and ability.

Kingston University is developing a programme to work with African manufacturers of batch produced craft based products. The aim is to provide these manufacturers with access to UK expertise. How this programme differs from previous attempts to bridge the continental design divide is that African organisations set the design brief to which Kingston designers respond. Assessing their own manufacture capability and drafting a design brief to fit, mean that sustainable relationships between the manufacturer and designer are fostered.

Working in partnership with Wola Nani, Kingston University is launching its commitment to investing design expertise in projects and people that need it most. Wola Nani is a non‐profit making organisation established in 1994 in response to the ongoing AIDS crisis in Africa. It is committed to providing a caring and developmental service that enables people living with HIV to respond positively to their status. Through counselling, care, training, increased awareness and community support people with HIV are empowered to take control of their lives with confidence, dignity and hope.

A team from Beijing’s Institute of Fashion Technology has scooped top prize in the British Council’s Dream Lab competition.  The winning team was  ‘3.2.1’, of Beijing’s Institute of Fashion and Technology, and all six students and their academic mentors are now in the UK between 23 – 30 April 2010 for an educational and cultural prize week.  This trip of lifetime will be a truly inspiring educational and cultural experience, including opportunities to interact with all the institutions involved, including seeing British design in action at UK universities, seeing behind the scenes at a leading design agency and meeting experts from the Science and Design Museums in London. The week is also an opportunity to see just how inspirational the UK can be for young people looking for an international education.

On the 14 November, a venue at Sanlitun village in Beijing was transformed into a contemporary gallery space for an exciting weekend of Chinese and UK innovation.  Teams from across China came to present their creative work at the final stage of an 8 week competition developed by the British Council’s Education UK team and five leading organisations in the UK : Bournemouth and Kingston Universities, the Science Museum, The Design Museum, and The Wellcome Trust.

Martin Barnes, a Kingston Graphic Design graduate from 1999, organised a Flash Mob Art exhibition in a pedestrian underpass in Beijing last week.  The mini Kingston event, put on to stimulate the city’s creative design scene coincided with a visit to the city by FADA’s Academic Director of Overseas Development, Leo Duff.

A scary movie written, produced and directed by a senior technician from Kingston University was released as a bonus feature on the UK DVD of the Hollywood blockbuster, Paranormal Activity, last week.

Taking the stairs might seem a little bit more appealing after watching Kenny Evans’ debut film, which has won praise from film festivals around the world. The University’s Head of Department, Moving Image, made a promise to himself that he would fulfil his lifetime ambition of making a short film before he turned forty. The Lift, which was filmed around Kingston University, is a psychological thriller and tells the story of a man who took an unwanted ride in an elevator.

“I promised myself I’d make a fiction film by the time I was 40, and we actually finished shooting it on my 40th birthday,” Kenny said.

He began writing the 28-minute movie in 2007 in his spare time. It took two years and Kenny invested around £15,000 of his own money. He also wrote and sang the theme tune, and the lift itself was built as a set in the University’s Moving Image studio.

“Writing it took a total of about six months over two years, and we shot it in ten days with professional actors and crew,” he said. “I had to use special effects to hide the many rough edges on the sets and I also digitally added elements that we couldn’t afford, like signs, vehicles and big explosions.”

Kenny showed the movie at the Cannes short film festival, and entered it into a competition to find a short film to accompany the DVD release of the acclaimed movie, Paranormal Activity. He was thrilled when he won. It also won Best Film in the Balticon Sci-Fi festival and has been screened at around ten festivals across the world.

Kenny has had a couple of ideas for his next film, but despite the success of The Lift, he will not be limiting himself to the horror genre. “I want to make another fiction film,” he mused, “but not necessarily a scary one.” Although he liked watching horror films as he was growing up, as a film maker it is good stories that interest Kenny, whatever their genre.